Assessment for Learning
A blog for busy K-16 educators where we share ideas, strategies, and best assessment practices
that move the learning forward.
Cathy Box, PhD
that move the learning forward.
Cathy Box, PhD
Another way to make the learning targets clear to your students is to provide examples of strong and weak work. What quality work looks like should never be a secret. Have you ever assigned a project for your students and the work they submitted was way below par? It's possible that the learning targets and criteria for success were not clear. Remember - it's about helping students learn the concepts with depth and to the best of their ability. So show them examples! I use this strategy with writing assignments and the quality of work has gone WAY up and my time spent grading and providing feedback has gone WAY down! It's a win/win. Here’s How After you have converted your competencies or standards into user-friendly language, do the same for the rubric you'll be using (and you do use rubrics for projects, right?) Step I 1. Identify words and phrases in the adult version of the rubric that your students might not understand. Convert the definitions into wording your students will understand. 2. Phrase the student-friendly version in the first person. 3. To introduce the language of the rubric to students: Ask students to work in groups to brainstorm ideas to answer the question “What do you think a good _______________(your assignment) looks like?” “What skills would it require to complete?” (You may need to prompt them to remember similar assignments in the past – what made them successful, or what was a stumbling block.) 4. Record their responses on the board. Keep the list in their language – don’t paraphrase it. 5. Tell students that they have developed a good list or set of criteria, and that they have done exactly what teachers and other content experts do when they are creating a rubric to judge an assignment. Tell them that their list includes many of the same characteristics on the experts list. 6. Show them examples of strong and weak work. Let students work in groups to extend their list. 7. Record their responses on the board. 8. Introduce the “expert” rubric and have students match their list to the expert list. Describe criteria that students had not included on their list. In so doing students identify what they already know, link the descriptions of quality to the language of the scoring guide, and realize that the concepts on the rubric are not totally foreign to them. Remember that students should have a rubric that clearly describes quality work before they begin the assignment. Then let students practice by using the rubric on examples of strong and weak work as described in Step II. Step II This is a powerful strategy that lets students practice using the rubrics and helps them see what real quality looks like and what is expected. The conversation that ensues as a result of this activity is priceless. Make sure that all samples of strong and weak work are completely anonymous. You may want to ask students for permission to use their work as a teaching example and then save it for next year, trade with another teacher, or use with a different class, but be sure to black out the students name. Or create your own examples, inserting the kind of errors students typically make. 1. Students work independently at first – this is not an exercise in offering peer feedback. That process comes later. 2. Distribute the student-friendly rubric. If possible, focus on one trait at a time. 3. Begin with a strong example (but don’t tell them it’s strong) and distribute or display the sample. Read it aloud if appropriate. 4. Ask students to score the example independently. After students have had the opportunity to settle on a score individually, ask them to work in small groups to discuss their judgments and the reasons why, using the language of the scoring rubric. ***This is very important. The purpose for the activity is to deepen their understanding of the scoring rubric, so as they are discussing, walk around the class reinforcing students’ use of the rubric’s language and concepts to support their judgments. 5. Next, ask students to vote as a class and tally their choices: How many gave this a 1? A 2? A 3?, etc. Ask for volunteers to share what score they gave and why. Encourage them to use language from the rubric. Refrain from expressing your opinion at this time. 6. After all groups have spoken, share the score that you would give it and justify your rating. 7. Complete the process again with examples of weak work. Now have your students complete their own assignment using the rubric. The quality of work will improve greatly, now that they know exactly what quality does and does not look like. YES it takes time, but it is worth it. Adapted from Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning by Jan Chappuis. 2009 by Cathy Box, Lubbock Christian University
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3221 59th St. Lubbock, TX 79413 806-792-2889 Literacy Lubbock Mahon Library 2nd Floor 1306 9th St Lubbock, TX 79401 806-775-3636 Guadalupe-Parkway Neighborhood Centers 123 North Avenue N Lubbock, Texas 79401 806-765-9713 Early Learning Centers of Lubbock 1639 Main Street Lubbock, TX 79401 806-765-9981 Texas Boys Ranch 4810 N County Road 2800 Lubbock, TX 79403 806-747-3187 It doesn’t matter if you teach college world history or 3rd grade math, it should be perfectly clear to your students what they are expected to learn and be able to do, and what success looks like. It should never be a mystery! For some reason there are still those teachers who just dive right in and expect the students to follow blindly until they get to the end. We've already talked about backwards design and how important it is to start with the end in mind. An effective teacher decides even before starting the unit what the end goal is and what mastery will look like, then that information guides their scaffolding of the lessons. Why not share the learning targets with the students? If you share with your students exactly what the learning targets are and what success looks like, I promise you, they are much more likely to reach that target and do it well. Doesn't it just make sense? If a friend drove up to your house and you hopped in the car, the first thing you'd want to know is "where are we going?" Or here's a sports analogy: A few years ago my daughter was on the cross country team and they had a new coach who was unfamiliar with routes around school. So she had the runners just follow her in her car as she mapped out the two miles for them to run. My daughter's time was terrible at the end and she was NOT HAPPY. She told me later that "it's really hard for me to push myself when I can't even see the finish line…" and that resonated with me and my classroom teaching and assessing. It's much more difficult for students to push themselves if they don’t have any idea where they are going. Bottom line - learning targets and criteria for success should be established early and communicated often. (I recommend Moss and Brookhart's Learning Targets: Helping Students Aim for Understanding in Today's Lesson.) There are MANY ways that that this can be accomplished but I'll share a few practical ways and you can take it from there. Elementary classrooms Before you begin your unit, rewrite your state standard into learning targets with success criteria using kid friendly language. Post them prominently in the room and refer to them before you begin the lesson and most certainly at the end of the lesson. Better yet, provide them with a list before you start the unit and have them self-assess through traffic lighting before and after instruction. Click here to see an example. Here's a third grade math standard in Texas. (10) Personal financial literacy. The student applies mathematical process standards to manage one's financial resources effectively for lifetime financial security. The student is expected to: (A) distinguish between fixed and variable expenses; Seriously, if you write that on the board and expect it to make sense to an 9 year old… Let's write it in language that a 3rd grader can understand. Learning Target We are learning how to manage money so that we can live comfortably for our whole lives. Success criteria: (Particular to A)
Secondary classrooms Just like in elementary, rewrite your state standards into learning targets and success criteria using student friendly language. (It would be really effective if you had your students help you do this.) Provide each student with a handout that has LTs and SC listed and have them self-assess through traffic lighting. Students should keep up with their own progress related to each I Can statement. Here's a high school Biology standard in Texas - (6) Science concepts. The student knows the mechanisms of genetics, including the role of nucleic acids and the principles of Mendelian Genetics. The student is expected to: (F) predict possible outcomes of various genetic combinations such as monohybrid crosses, dihybrid crosses and non-Mendelian inheritance; Learning Target We are learning how Mendelian genetics work, including the role of DNA and RNA in inheritance. Success Criteria: (Particular to F)
College classrooms Many college courses are guided by state or federal requirements for certification purposes. Some courses are not, yet each discipline has overarching goals or objectives that guide their instruction. In my classes, I have taken our state competencies and reworded them into language that is easier to understand then added success criteria. Click here to see the handout I give students in one of my classes at the beginning of the semester. They traffic light each success criteria, and at the end of the semester provide an evidence portfolio that demonstrates progress or mastery of each I Can statement. The students also work in groups to create posters that illustrate each learning target and we post them around them room. I refer to them frequently. Here's a Texas Education Agency competency for pre-service teachers - 003 The teacher understands procedures for designing effective and coherent instruction and assessment based on appropriate learning goals and objectives. Although this is not too difficult to understand, here's what I've written: Learning Target We are learning how to design effective lessons and assessments that make sense and are based on the TEKS. Success Criteria
As the instructor for this course, I know what my students need to be able to do to demonstrate mastery of Competency 003. That information then dictates the learning activities. And as you can guess, my grades are specific to mastery of each objective…but that's for another blog….another day. Just give it a try, friends! You will be amazed at how much better your students perform and how focused and intentional you are about your instruction. It is truly transforming. By now, if you poke your head out of your classroom at all you've heard the term "formative assessment". It's been one of the buzzwords in education for the last decade, especially after the release of work by Black and Wiliam (Assessment and Classroom Learning, 1998). This article was a game changer in so many ways and implications are summarized in their booklet Inside the Black Box. Black and Wiliam described formative assessment as all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes 'formative' when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet the needs. Unfortunately the term "formative assessment" has been hijacked and distorted in some cases by for-profit organizations who want to sell you formative assessment instruments. Many in education now call it Assessment for Learning. Even the name is telling. It's assessment that moves the learning forward, as opposed to Assessment of Learning that does not. It's a process, not a product. Jan Chappuis, in her book Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning described it as formal and informal processes teachers and students use to gather evidence for the purpose of informing next steps in learning. I teach an assessment class for pre-service teachers at my University and use her book as our guide to implementing Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies in the classroom. I also use the Seven Strategies when I work with in-service teachers. There are many other approaches to implementing formative assessment or AfL in the classroom - especially the five strategies suggested by Dylan Wiliam himself. You can't go wrong there. I could cite dozens and dozens of research studies about the effectiveness of formative assessment (yes, I plan to use the terms interchangeably) but I won't do so in this blog. Contact me if you need more information. But the bottom line: research tells us, and I know from my own research projects and personal experiences as a classroom teacher and college professor that IT WORKS in improving the learning. Students achieve more and reach higher levels across the board. It doesn't matter if they are "low achieving" or "high achieving" students. They all reach a new level. But it is especially powerful for students who are not considered the best and the brightest. Why? You may ask. Assessment for Learning transcends the acquisition of knowledge and empowers students in their own learning. Isn't that what education is about? Nothing is more fulfilling to us as teachers than the realization that we have guided students to take control of their education and helped them become self-directed learners in their own right - regardless of the academic subject, their IQ, their learning style, etc. Assessment for Learning does that - if implemented properly in the classroom. So that begs the question - what is it and how do I implement it? Here's an overview of the Seven Strategies. In future blogs, we'll go into depth and look at ways to implement seamlessly into the classroom. Hang with me and we'll get there! Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning Where am I going?
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998a). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in
Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7-75. Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998b). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. London: nferNelson Publishing Company. Chappuis, J. (2015). Seven strategies of assessment for learning (2nd ed). Hoboken, N.J.: Pearson Education, Inc. One of the hardest things we do as teachers is plan our instructional units. Where do you start? How do you proceed? What should I teach? How long should it take? What is a good sequence for my activities? And if we're attuned to Assessment for Learning: What will mastery look like? How will I know they've got it? So many issues need to be addressed when planning. For YEARS in my biology classroom this was my approach: 1) Determine the topic or content that was to be covered 2) Start planning my activities (lecture, lab, fun group activity to review for test, test) 3) implement my plan. Then when test time rolled around - after instruction of course, I had to design and write my own test, or use one from the resources that came with my curriculum, or use one from previous years, or borrow one from a fellow teacher. I continued this approach for years and my frustration grew as students often did poorly on my tests and I just couldn't understand why. Of course there are many reasons students may underperform on a test, but I contend that I did a very poor job of planning and implementing learner centered activities that aligned with my assessment. It was top-down, teacher driven, curriculum delivery. As I grew in my profession and reflected on the success (or lack thereof) of my students, I sought ways to improve the learning for my students and came across Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe. They propose a very simple yet effective solution to planning. It's used throughout the world by curriculum designers and classroom teachers and has the research to back it up. It has indeed revolutionized the way I plan. It's called Backwards Design. Simply put, you begin with the end in mind. What would mastery look like? I always say to myself, "if my students can do this _________________, I know they've got it!" Not the multiple choice test at the end, but an authentic task that demonstrates they really have an understanding of the concept and have the knowledge and skills to apply it. Once I determine what that final assessment activity looks like, then I can plan my instruction to prepare them for the assessment. I highly recommend using backwards design for planning your units. For college professors it works beautifully for designing your entire semester! Let's say you are planning your Technical Writing course, for example. By the end of the semester, if they can write a business proposal that meets all the technical writing criteria that you know is critical to being successful then you know they've got it! Carefully plan your instruction to teach each component, preparing them for that final assessment activity. Click here for a template that will help you get started. You can also follow this link to get the "Cliff Note" version of UbD. Please share your experiences with planning. Do you use backwards design? We would love to hear your suggestions. We will discuss how to sequence learner centered activities in another blog so stay tuned! So school is about to start. It's time to plan your lessons and think about structuring their learning activities. Where do you start? Once you get the managerial obligations out of the way, the temptation is to just jump in and start teaching. DON'T DO IT! We often make assumptions about what our students know and can do. We begin that lecture on the cell, or the Civil War, or whatever our content is, without having any idea what misconceptions, skills, knowledge, or understandings our students have (or don't have) before we begin. It's an easy mistake to make. The most precious commodity in the classroom is time. Time, or lack thereof, causes us to cut corners that come back later to bite us. It does you and your students a disservice. I want to encourage you to start the unit with some sort of activity that reveals to you AND to your students where they are in the learning. What do they know and can do? What misconceptions do they have? Students come to us all over the place in the learning continuum and if we don't pay attention to that, we are starting on shaky ground (for more on prior knowledge read this chapter in How People Learn). Yes, we have to make some basic assumptions about their knowledge and skills, but don't assume too much! Do something to reveal their current level of understanding. It could be as mundane as a pre-quiz (please don't) or learner centered as a Quiz Quiz Trade activity. Google what misconceptions are associated with your concept. Don't presume to know - your expertise leaves a blind spot that makes it impossible for you to even imagine what they are thinking. I remember one time teaching a unit on moon phases and some of my middle school students believed that the moon actually shrank and swelled from crescent to full. Some thought that the sun caused shadows that created the phases. Unimaginable to me - real to them. But a caveat here - if your classroom is not an emotionally safe place to learn, revealing their current knowledge will only happen once. If students are made to feel embarrassed or humiliated because they don't know something, the whole thing goes south - not just for that student, but for all the students in the class. Be kind. Let them know that they just don't know it yet. Here are a few strategies that work well in revealing what students know before starting: KWL - What I Know, What I Wonder, and What I Learned The teacher allows students to think/pair/share “what we know” about a topic and discuss their ideas with the class. Ideas are listen in the “K” column of the table. Again students think/pair/share and generate questions about the topic. These are listed in the “W” column. At the end of the lesson, students list what they have learned in the “L” column. This strategy allows students to focus on the problem at hand and determine what questions need to be answered in order to solve the problem. It helps the teacher monitor student concept development and reveals misconceptions. Discovery Quilt At the beginning of a unit, ask students to brainstorm what they know about the target concept. Give each group of students, three colorful index cards. On each card, they should write down one thing the “know” about the topic. Have the group work together to come up with three questions about the topic. Those questions should be written on a white index card. Tape each completed index card to a large piece of butcher paper in a patchwork quilt fashion. The white index cards can be used as starting points for classroom discussion or lessons, or they can investigate one of the questions of their choice. At the end of class each day, have students answer one of the questions on the quilt by replacing one of the white cards with one of the colorful cards. This activity allows students to verbalize questions that they have and then formalize their learning while allowing the teacher the opportunity to assess where they are in their knowledge on the topic. Surveys A survey can be developed for any topic at any level. Prior to teaching a unit, determine what your students should know about a topic, and what you want them to learn. Create a survey that reflects those goals. Have the students take the survey prior to instruction, and again after instruction. Quiz Quiz Trade In this Kagan structure, students quiz a partner, get quizzed by a partner, then trade partners to repeat the process. Get feedback from the students to determine what they know and don't know. Concept Mapping Concept maps are drawings or diagrams showing the mental connections that students make between a major concept the instructor focuses on and the other concepts they have learned. This technique provides an observable and assessable record of the student’s conceptual development. To use in a formative fashion, brainstorm critical concepts associated with your topic and ask students to concept map them using sticky notes. Allow students to change them during the course of the unit as they learn. There are many others: anticipation guides, Think, Pair, Share, etc. I hope you will share your thoughts below and strategies you use to reveal their current level of understanding. Happy planning! I was a high school and middle school science teacher in Texas for years and have never worked harder in my life. The demands were great and the pressure that I felt for my students to be successful was overwhelming. But it was nothing compared to what teachers and students face today. The rapidly changing world in which we live, global competition, 21st Century needs in the workplace, technology demands and opportunities, and high stakes testing have changed what students need to know as well as how they learn, and therefore what and how we should teach at both the pre-college and college level. This compels us to rethink teaching and learning. I was a classroom teacher as I worked through coursework toward my PhD and learned some strong lessons about the classroom. My number one mantra: It's all about the learning. We often focus more on teaching, and less on learning. Brings to mind that old joke that school is a place where students go to watch teachers work. Ouch!
This blog is dedicated to learning. In particular how we (both teachers and students) can use classroom assessment to promote learning and address the needs of 21st century learners. Journey with me and share your experiences so that we can learn from each other and grow. |
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AuthorI am a former science teacher and currently work at Lubbock Christian University as the QEP Director and in the School of Education preparing future teachers. I am passionate about helping teachers find practical ways to improve learning! Archives
January 2018
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